In a manufacturing process of semiconductor devices or liquid crystal displays (LCDs) including wet etching, cleaning, wet spin etching, coating, and developing, various kinds of dispensing nozzles are utilized. A conventional dispensing nozzle is disclosed in FIG. 2 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,312,487.
Referring to FIG. 1A, a conventional dispensing system includes a storage tank 101 for storing a processing material 100, a delivery pipeline 102 for transporting the processing material 100, a control valve 103 for controlling the flow of the processing material 100, and a nozzle 104 for dispensing the processing material 100 onto a wafer (not shown) or glass substrate (not shown) to be processed.
The processing material 100 is represented by dots in FIGS. 1A and 1B. After the processing steps have been completed and the control valve 103 is closed, the processing material 100 remained at the dispensing nozzle 104 changes it property or gets hardened because of its contact with air. Thus, a hardened substance 105 is formed around the dispensing nozzle 104, as shown in FIG. 1B. The hardened substance 105 is mixed with the processing material 100 in the subsequent treatment and is dispensed onto the wafer or glass substrate. As a result, the processing material is polluted, and the wafer or the glass substrate can be damaged.
In some dispensing nozzle systems, when the function of the dispensing nozzle is disabled, a suck-back valve is employed to suck back the processing material so as to prevent the processing material from remaining at an outlet of the dispensing nozzle. However, the proper functions of the suck-back valve are disabled due to the aging thereof or the chemical reaction between the materials and the suck-back valve. As a result, the processing material gradually leaks and drops onto the wafer or the glass substrate. In this case, the product quality of the wafer or the glass substrate can be adversely affected.
Referring to FIG. 2, a conventional multi-nozzle device includes a body 106 and four dispensing nozzles 107 arranged in parallel for providing four kinds of processing materials. In order to let a wafer or glass substrate be processed properly, the processing materials have to be uniformly dispersed onto the wafer or glass substrate. Thus, to dispense one of the processing materials, the body 106 has to be properly positioned so as to let the corresponding dispensing nozzle 107 initially align with the center of the wafer or glass substrate and subsequently the body 106 is gradually shifted so that the processing material is uniformly distributed throughout the wafer or glass substrate.
In general, in order to prevent the processing materials from being splashed to the backside of the wafer or the glass substrate, none of the dispensing nozzles 107 is allowed to dispense the processing materials outside the wafer or glass substrate. Therefore, the shifting range of the multi-nozzle device has to be smaller than that of the single nozzle device 104 shown in FIG. 1. In this case, some processing materials cannot be dispensed throughout the entire surface to be treated of the wafer or glass substrate. The details will be described in the following with reference to FIGS. 3A and 3B.
Referring to FIG. 3A, a to-be-treated wafer or glass substrate is represented by a substrate 110. The processing region in which the dispensing nozzle 104 is allowed to shift is the area within a circle 111. The maximum range in which the dispensing nozzle 104 is allowed to shift above the substrate 110 is the area within the circle 111.
Referring to FIG. 3B, a to-be-treated wafer or glass substrate is designated as a substrate 110. The processing region in which the rightmost dispensing nozzle 107 is allowed to shift is the area within a circle 111. The maximum processing region in which the leftmost dispensing nozzle 107 is allowed to shift is the area within a circle 112 due to that the processing region in which the rightmost dispensing nozzle 107 is allowed to shift is limited by the circle 111.
Thus, if the dispensing nozzle device shown in FIG. 2 is used, the dispensing region is small and the movement of the dispensing nozzle cannot be easily controlled. If the dispensing nozzle device is required to dispense the processing material to the substrate center, the method for adjusting each of the dispensing nozzles 107 to the substrate center is complicated and cannot be easily completed.
Referring to FIG. 4, a conventional multi-nozzle device is provided with a body 108 and four dispensing nozzles 109 arranged in a circular shape. The processing materials dispensed from the dispensing nozzles 109 are directly dispensed to the center point of the wafer or the glass substrate by a proper design. As the processing materials dispensed from the dispensing nozzle are not perpendicularly impinged onto the wafer or the glass substrate, the slantingly dispensed processing material can damage the patterns on the wafer or the glass substrate. Furthermore, the slantingly dispensed processing material cannot be dispersed to deep trenches formed on the wafer or glass substrate. Thus, the quality of the product is adversely affected. Moreover, the slantingly dispensed processing material causes a lateral force that can topple the wafer or the glass substrate.